May 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Betsy Spethmann

ConAgra boosted Orville Redenbacher's popcorn sales 23% when it leveraged the popularity of ABC's Lost drama series with a Lost in Hawaii sweepstakes and DVD rebate offer.

Orville got Lost twice, partnering with ABC Unlimited and Buena Vista Home Entertainment for the single campaign.

Timing was crucial: The August-September promo broke just as Buena Vista's season one DVD bowed, a few weeks before the show's season two premiere on ABC.

“We tapped into TV as a great American pastime,” says Susan Allen, marketing manager for Orville Redenbacher's. “We wanted to leverage the new fall season, and Lost was really big at the time.”

This is Orville's first joint promotion with a TV property. The growing trend of TV shows on DVD — and the fact that 80% of popcorn consumed at home is eaten in front of the TV — made the three-way tie-in a logical fit.

“We saw the DVD release as a key element of the promotion,” Allen says. “It could have been a risk to jump into TV shows on DVD, but it fit with our brand positioning and it was very successful.”

The best part for Lost fans: a sneak peek at season two, courtesy of Orville. Two million popcorn packages carried in-pack codes that gave fans access to exclusive Lost content at ABC.com.

Bursts on the front of popcorn packages touted the Lost in Hawaii online sweeps at the show's microsite on ABC.com. The grand prize was a trip for two to Oahu, where the series is filmed; weekly prize packages included a season one DVD, Orville popcorn and a Lost duffel bag.

A mail-in rebate gave consumers $10 off the season one DVD with the purchase of three packages of popcorn. A 45 million-circulation FSI carried a rebate form and 40-cent coupon; 5,000 P-O-P displays, headlined “Get lost with a bag of Orville,” supported the offer in supermarkets and mass merchandisers. Ryan Partnership, Minneapolis, handled the full campaign. Three spots that aired during Lost's first-season finale in September touted the promotion and sent viewers online.

Orville first found Lost when Buena Vista presented its list of upcoming DVD releases. Lost's schedule fit Orville's promotional window; the DVD deal opened the door for a TV tie-in with ABC. Orville started with the network's ABC Unlimited division, which handles all off-air work, to layer online elements into the DVD offer. From there, Orville negotiated an ad buy during the season premiere. Coordinating all the elements was a coup for a smaller packaged goods brand. CPGs have a tough time managing TV tie-ins, because packaging timelines run an average six to nine months out; Orville's DVD tie-in cracked the code for a prime-time push that fit its promotional window.

The trickiest part was accommodating all the partners' timelines, Allen says: “There was a lot of back-end coordination, but all the elements were integrated seamlessly.”

Orville bumped its dollar sales 23% over the year before; Buena Vista Home Entertainment sold more than 1 million season one DVDs.

Allen is proudest of “delivering the brand in a way consumers expect. It's the consumer who judges how well a promotion does; this one carried a lot of compelling offers.”

ConAgra has followed up with other entertainment-themed promos, including an umbrella effort for the Super Bowl, starring former NFL star Boomer Esiason.

Orville continues to play sports, too, with an online instant-win game timed to the NCAA finals, awarding season tickets for local college basketball, flat-screen TVs and a “Snap TV” trivia game on DVD. At the same time, Orville offers a $5 rebate on King Kong DVDs. What's next? Stay tuned.

• CAMPAIGN: Get Lost With Orville
• AGENCY: Ryan Partnership
• CLIENT: ConAgra/Orville Redenbacher's
• PARTNER: ABC-Buena Vista Home Entertainment

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